Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [273]
He told her briefly what had happened. She was silent except for the occasional, “Oh damn” and “Oh hell, sir.” He told her that they would need to get word to Alatea’s family in Argentina. Could Barbara find the graduate student once again and make the necessary phone call? Yes, she could, she told him. She was that bloody sorry about the way things had worked out, as well.
Havers said, “How are you, sir? You don’t sound good. Anything else I c’n do at this end?”
“Tell the superintendent that I was detained in Cumbria,” he said. “I’ll be on my way in an hour or two.”
“Anything else I should tell her?” Havers asked. “Want me to let her know what’s happened?”
Lynley considered this only briefly before he made his decision. “Best to let things lie as they are,” he said.
She said, “Right,” and rang off.
Lynley knew he could trust her to do as he’d asked, and it occurred to him, then, that he’d not thought at all about ringing Isabelle. Either on the previous night or this morning upon waking from a very bad sleep, he’d not considered her.
Deborah was waiting for him when he descended the stairs into reception at the Crow and Eagle. She was very ill looking. Her eyes grew bright with tears when she saw him, and she cleared her throat roughly to keep them from falling.
She was sitting on a wooden bench opposite the reception desk. He sat next to her and put his arm round her shoulders. She sagged into him, and he kissed the side of her head. She reached for his other hand and held it, and he felt the change in both of their bodies as they began to breathe as one.
He said, “Don’t think what you’re thinking.”
“How can I not?”
“I’m not sure. But I know that you mustn’t.”
“Tommy, she would never have gone out into the bay if I hadn’t been pursuing this whole mad surrogate mother business. And that had nothing to do with Ian Cresswell’s death, which you and Simon knew all along. I’m at fault.”
“Deb darling, secrets and silence caused all of this. Lies caused this. Not you.”
“You’re being very kind.”
“I’m being truthful. It was what Alatea couldn’t bear to tell him about herself that took her onto the sands. It was that information that took her to Lancaster in the first place. You can’t make her secrets and her death your fault because they’re not, and that’s how it is.”
Deborah said nothing for a moment. Her head was bent and she seemed to be studying the toes of her black leather boots. She finally murmured, “But there’re things one must be silent about, aren’t there?”
He thought about this, about everything that remained and would remain forever unspoken between them. He replied with, “And who knows that better than we two?” and when he loosened his arm from her shoulders, she looked at him. He smiled at her fondly. “London?” he said.
“London,” she replied.
ARNSIDE
CUMBRIA
No matter Nicholas’s desire for solitude, Valerie had insisted to her husband that they would remain in Arnside House the rest of that night. She’d phoned Manette to give her the news, telling her to stay away. She’d phoned Mignon as well but with little worry that Mignon would bring herself all the way to Arnside since she’d been holed up in her tower from the moment she’d understood that her parents had no intention of continuing to be at her monetary, emotional, and physical beck and call. Mignon hardly mattered to Valerie at this point, anyway. Her concern was Nicholas. Her worry was what he might do in the wake of this disaster.
His message to them via the detective from New Scotland Yard had been terse but forthright. He wanted to see no one. That had been all.
Valerie had said to Lynley, “She’ll have people in Argentina. We’ll need to let them know. There will be arrangements…”
Lynley had told her that the Met would handle informing Alatea’s people since he had an officer who had tracked them down. As for arrangements, perhaps they all ought to wait to see if a body could be found.
She hadn’t thought of that: that there might not be a body.